Bryan Smith

Bryan Smith

@bryansmith.io

Vibe bootstrapping a software holding co & a service holding co. Previously CTO for an 8-figure exit. Husband, dad, & ✝️ CraftedWeb.to

2.5K followers387 following1.7K posts

Just got off an onboarding call which was music to my ears: 1) "Oh this is really easy to use" (we're getting this a lot) and 2) Oh I can stop using [a competitor] and just use you, perfect I hate them. I'd never use a quote like that on a comparison page, but there will be a comparison soon!

The rate of innovation we're seeing. Opus 4.6, boom Codex 5.3. I'm a Claude guy using dev3000. Who's got the best comparison of using Codex?

The new coding loop: 60% -> Spend a lot of time on definition (with AI) 10% -> Spend a little time using AI to turn it into stories 1%-> Walk away and do other things while AI codes 20% -> Come back and test and do code reviews 9% -> Use AI to do most of the necessary changes

Trying out Cursor's agent mode today. I didn't realize it had a Plan mode then a Build mode available. It just one shot 3 pages and 3 forms, made server actions, db changes, in under 60 seconds. 🤯

I've noticed Claude doesn't produce documents as artifacts as often as it used to. I frequently have to tell it to do it after it creates something. (unless it's code)

This AWS outage is really messing with my morning. You can't subscribe to App Store purchases right now because of it, and I have 3 ad videos I need to record.

Optimizing for growth when you have 0 customers is like deciding what Michelle restaurant you want to eat at tonight when your bank account says $0. Just ship already. #buildinpublic

Stop building for other software companies. There's only 585k software and IT companies in the US. And only 36k of those are SaaS companies. Stop building for other Indies, they'll just clone you with AI or fold in a couple months. Instead... #buildinpublic 👇

Want a large TAM of hungry buyers? Sell to local service companies. There's 36M SMBs in the US. Many are in sectors that are not software savvy, they just need something that works so they can focus on their service (plumbing, electrical, bookkeeping, etc).

I love Claude projects. I use them for nearly every aspect of my businesses. Once I use a prompt more than twice I spin up a project. I've got one's for SEO, content outlines, content analysis, writing, tweets, and project analysis. And I have ones for... #buildinpublic

Plus ones for my businesses core documents for info retrieval. One for metrics for fast analysis. And I think I'll have one that I use for what's changed (product and business wise). Am I missing any good ones?

Today's plan: 1. Wrap up onboarding for Ceri. 2. Make jalapeño jelly 3. Coil up the hoses for winter 4. Make our initial landing page for Ceri. Oh, what's Ceri? You'll see soon. #buildinpublic

Somedays I'm like "Do I buy this little single purpose tool for $12/month... or do I vibe code it myself and host it as a free tool for my own SEO..." AI really is changing the landscape of what's possible.

Most makers wing it when it comes to marketing. That may work for vibe coding, but not for marketing. The right play is to pick a channel, learn how to execute on it, and learn <-> iterate. Here's my top 4 for SaaS: * FB Ads * Google Ads * SEO * Cold email #buildinpublic

I'm working on marketing automation today. Just signed up for HubSpot (man the CRM space sucks). The goal is for FB form leads to get added to my CRM (with Zapier) and automatically get sent an SMS, get added to my newsletter, and to a 3 email sequence. #buildinpublic

I went with HubSpot over Go High Level mostly because from what I've seen the UI of GHL seems to be a mess. HubSpot is pretty straight forward and has a ton of integrations. Price is reasonable for a soloprenuer as well (unlike Close .com!)

Okay well I ditched @hubspot for @attio.com Basic paid version of HubSpot didn't seem to have a kanban board. But worse, app performance was awful in Safari. Lag city. Attio has a deals kanban board as part of their Plus plan. Straight forward, no contact sales, just there.